Is the World Ready for the Population Bust?

01/02/25 • 34 min

1 Listener

Over the past century, the world’s population has exploded—surging from around one and a half billion people in 1900 to roughly eight billion today. But according to the political economist Nicholas Eberstadt, that chapter of human history is over, and a new era, which he calls the age of depopulation, has begun.

Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute and has written extensively on demographics, economic development, and international security. In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs, Eberstadt argued that plummeting fertility rates everywhere from the United States and Europe to India and China point to a new demographic order—one that will transform societies, economies, and geopolitics.

Eberstadt spoke with senior editor Kanishk Tharoor about what is driving today’s population decline, why policy cannot reverse it, and how governments can reckon with a shrinking world.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Eberstadt spoke with senior editor Kanishk Tharoor about what is driving today’s population decline, why policy cannot reverse it, and how governments can reckon with a shrinking world.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Previous Episode

Antony Blinken on American Foreign Policy in a Turbulent Age

In the four years since U.S. President Joe Biden took office, the geopolitical landscape has radically changed. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought war back to Europe. Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel sparked a widening conflict in an already chaotic Middle East. And Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait has refocused attention on the Indo-Pacific as a possible theater of combat.

Through it all, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been at the helm of U.S. foreign policy: shuttling between capitals, negotiating with allies and adversaries, and helping shape a vision for American engagement with the world—a vision he laid out in a recent essay for Foreign Affairs.

Now, on the eve of Donald Trump’s return to office, Blinken reflects on the geopolitical challenges facing the United States today—and offers lessons from his own tenure for American foreign policy going forward.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Next Episode

Bonus: In the Room With Xi Jinping

The United States’ relationship with China has scarcely been so contentious. Over the last several years, the two powers have butted heads over issues including trade and technology, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Beijing’s belligerence in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Nicholas Burns has helped oversee Washington’s response to these rising tensions.

Burns has served as U.S. ambassador to China since 2022, the capstone of a four-decade career in the foreign service that has included posts as ambassador to NATO and Greece, State Department undersecretary for political affairs and spokesperson, and on the National Security Council staff on Soviet and Russian affairs. He has been in the room for some of the most consequential moments in recent U.S. foreign policy history: the fall of the Soviet Union, the 9/11 attacks, and now, the intensifying U.S.-Chinese competition.

Two years after his first conversation with editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan, Burns, in his final days as ambassador, looks back on the Biden administration’s approach to managing the relationship at this critical moment—and reflects on the need for diplomacy in the rivalry that may define the twenty-first century.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.